Inner Demons

By Jasmine Denton

Caine McKay harbors a dark secret. Those anger issues of his, they’re not just scary—they’re lethal.

When his father is sent to jail for a crime he didn’t commit; Caine moves from Chicago to a small town to live with his kindhearted grandmother. He tries to start a new life and forget the tragic circumstances that brought him to Tree Hollow, but his conscience and alter ego won’t let him. He finds an unexpected ally in Hannah, the local preacher’s daughter. Her belief in hope and second chances give him the anchor he needs to keep his anger rooted, and before long, Caine is completely attracted to her. But will her friendship take him on a road to redemption, or will it tear his world apart?

• Language: English
• Publisher: World Castle Publishing, LLC
• Release date: May 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781937085193

Jasmine Denton

Jasmine Denton started writing when she was ten, authoring a series of short stories about a line of princesses who find themselves in similar forbidden love scenarios. As a teenager, she wrote stories filled with angst and growing pains. Now, she’s found a genre that allows her to tell forbidden love and teen angst stories against a paranormal backdrop. Jasmine’s published works include Soul of the Sea, the first in the Curse of the Sea series and Inner Demons, a modern day retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.To learn more about Jasmine, you can follow her on Twitter (@JasmineLDenton) or visit her blog @ jasmineldenton.wordpress.com

Book preview

Prologue

I remember the first time I changed. I mean, I’d had anger problems before, but I’d never actually changed into something else, something inhuman—until that night.

That night, I stood at the front window of my apartment, looking out the dirty glass, speckled and spotty. Sirens from the squad cars rang through the night, announcing their presence to the entire street.

In front of me, police lights flashed in swirls of red and blue as an officer pushed my father into the back of a squad car. The lights fell across my dad’s weathered and worried face. His dark eyes focused on the window as if he could see me and his mouth set in a thin straight line, neither a frown nor a smile, enforcing his decision.

I looked away from him, focusing my attention on the dancing lights: red, blue, red, blue…

There were two roads for me to take. What the roads were and where they led, I had yet to find out.

Which is it going to be, Caine? Red, blue, red, blue…

Chapter One—Change

He’d sworn he’d never return to Tree Hollow. The small town housed people who remembered what happened thirteen years ago. Even though he’d only been four when his father had packed their belongings in the bed of a pickup truck and whisked them away in the middle of the night, Caine swore he would never go back to face those people who knew.

Yet, there he was—following his grandmother to the second floor of the farmhouse his father had grown up in. Since his dad was doing time in jail, Caine was forced to tread water in Tree Hollow for a year until he turned eighteen, and during those twelve piteous months, he’d be sharing a house with a woman in her sixties.

Grams pushed open a door and led Caine inside. Standing in the center of the room, she spread her arms out to gesture around her. This is your room.

Caine tossed his suitcase onto the bed and jammed his fists in his pockets. Taking a weary look around, he noticed that the bedspread, curtains, and rugs were all color coordinated in black and white. Across the room, a huge bay window lined with black and white checkered pillows overlooked the back yard. He had a hard time wrapping his head around the time it must have taken—and how much free time a person would have to have—to put that much detail and thought into a place meant for sleeping. Thanks, he said.

Gram’s nodded and gave him an overly warm smile, almost as if trying to compensate for something. Dinner is at six sharp. I’ll expect you washed up and in the kitchen to help at five thirty.

Sure.

I’ll let you unpack. Make yourself at home. Patting his shoulder, she left the room and turned down the hallway.

He shut the door behind her and leaned against it.

Wrinkling his nose—at the room, the decorations, everything—he walked over to his bed and popped open his suitcase. As he shoved already rumpled clothes into his dresser, he couldn’t help but wonder how, exactly, he had ended up there.

His grandmother’s house was very different from the apartment he’d shared with his father. Her house was decorated with what he called a woman’s touch—curtains, decorative pictures, and all kinds of frilly things. He determined almost immediately that he could live without the woman’s touch. All he needed was a bed, and if he was a in a jam, he could even manage without that.

He’d taught himself to live without all sorts of things—like people, for instance. The only person he’d ever needed was his dad, and the only reason he was living with the old lady now was because the judge in Chicago had refused to let him live on his own.

A gut-wrenching knife of pain tore through his stomach at the thought of his father. They shared the same features: jet-black hair that ended in short wisps at the eyebrows, broad shoulders, sharp cheekbones, and a stern jaw. Their eyes were practically identical—like little chunks of silver. He was always amazed how his father’s eyes could look so beautiful and rare, so compassionate and sweet, but in Caine’s own reflection, those same eyes looked sleek as ice and just as cold.

Still cursing that judge from Chicago, Caine glanced down at his watch when he shoved the last drawer shut: two o’clock.

He could already feel the boredom seeping into his body. How am I going to live in this one-horse town for a whole year? he taunted himself. It’s just one year. When you’re eighteen you can go wherever the hell you want.

Unable to stand the smallness of the room, he pulled the door open and headed down the stairs, straight for the front door. He’d just twisted the doorknob when he heard Grams say, Where are you going?

Caine froze in the doorway and, turning slowly, scraped a hand through his hair. To look for a job.

Grams nodded. I know you just got here, but I would appreciate it if you told me when you’re leaving and where you’re going.

Is she serious? I’m expected to check in, like some two-year-old? He struggled not to roll his eyes or make some snide remark like he normally would. He’d been as free as a bird when he lived with his dad. He’d never had to tell him where he was going—he didn’t even have to come home on the weekends if he didn’t want to. But then again, maybe that had been the problem. Grams was old, yet she’d taken him in anyway; in Caine’s eyes, that meant she deserved at least a little respect from him. Sorry, he said, ignoring his instincts to be spiteful.

She smiled through pink-painted lips. Remember the service station we passed on the way in?

He nodded.

They’re hiring. Maybe you should stop by there.

Thanks, he mumbled as he headed out the door.

He stopped at his motorcycle in the driveway. The second he’d laid eyes on the old lady, he’d been positive he wouldn’t be able to keep it. She surprised him, though, when she said, Well, I suppose you have to have something. He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but it didn’t matter to him; he was just grateful to have his motorcycle.

He climbed on, fastened his helmet, and then backed down the drive. He always felt better on the road. Whenever something was bothering him, whether it was school or a girl or memories of his mother, the problems always disappeared at the sight of asphalt stretching out in front of him. Just the smell of the highway—cloudy exhaust fumes mixed with sweet morning dew—was enough to soothe him. What he loved most about the road was that it led all over the country, so there was always somewhere to go.

The wind rushed against his face, and the pavement flew by underneath him—and nothing else mattered.

~~~

The secluded town of Tree Hollow held no more than 2,000-some odd people and was carved deep in the side of an immense, tree-covered, jagged Blue Ridge Mountain. The town was so small it hadn’t even appeared on any road signs until Caine and Grams were twenty minutes away.

Caine whipped his motorcycle down Main Street. It ran down the center of the town, each side of it lined with small, independently owned stores. The signs blurred by him, but he managed to make out the Antique Shoppe, Bill’s Barber Shop, Horton’s Grocery, and Paige’s Bookstore.

As he neared the center of town, something caught his attention, and he slowed his bike to a stop. Balancing his weight on his feet with the motorcycle between his legs, he looked up at a tall, lofty tree. It dwarfed the buildings around it, which in comparison looked like a crowd kneeling before their wooden king.

Age had taken the beautiful being and carved out the core, leaving only a shell, thus the hollow tree; the town was its namesake. His dad had told him stories about that tree, that it had been standing for hundreds of years, and when the area was first discovered, the people were so enamored with the tree’s stark beauty that they refused to tear it down. Instead, they built the town around it, and Tree Hollow was born. Caine felt a lot like that hollowed-out tree: ugly on the outside and rotten on the inside. Why anyone would admire such an ugly thing was beyond his understanding.

Revving his motorcycle to a start again, he guided it back onto the road and drove until he found the gas station Grams mentioned.

He parked his bike by the front entrance, climbed off, and removed his helmet. On a bench outside the front store, a group of old men sat, smoking cigarettes and shooting judgmental looks down their wrinkled noses at the boy.

Caine ignored them the best he could, fighting

Reviews for Inner Demons

[jacquietalento · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The title to this story fits perfectly. Ms. Denton took me on the best rollercoaster ride I have ever been on. Caine is someone that has had awful things happen to him and I won’t give any teasers on this one. Just know with this story, that things we have all felt in our past that we weren’t sure about or why, this will help you see it thru the eyes of the character. We all have an inner demon that demands from us, it’s how do we handle it. Must read story that I couldn’t put down and many emotions to go with it. I truly enjoyed reading this. I look forward to more of the author’s work.

[rtb_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reviewer: ValerieSource: eBook provided by author for reviewBlurb: Some people are born with a monster inside of them.Nobody knows this better than Caine McKay, a high school student harboring a dark secret. Those anger issues of his, they’re not only scary—they’re lethal. If Caine loses his temper, he loses the human part of himself and bulks out Mr. Hyde style.When his father is sent to jail, Caine moves from Chicago to a small town to live with his kindhearted grandmother. Struggling to control his violent alter-ego, he tries to start a new life and forget the tragic circumstances that brought him to Tree Hollow. When he meets Hannah, the local preacher’s daughter, he finds an unexpected ally. Her belief in hope and second chances give him the anchor he needs to keep his anger rooted, and before long, Caine is completely attracted to her.Then he wakes up one morning covered in blood, with no memory of what happened. He seeks Hannah’s comfort, only to find that she hates him. As Caine scrambles to uncover the repressed memory and piece together the night he can’t remember, other buried memories surface—including one that could be the key to everything that’s happening to him.Content Warning: violenceReview: Yes, I am a fan of the Hulk – the big green one. Look at the cover for this book! When I was first asked to review this book, I was excited. Would this be a telling of when the Hulk was a teenager? What I discovered was the story of Caine, heartbreaking and yet redeeming.Caine reveres his father. He adores his father. His father is everything to him and as you read his story and experience his flashbacks, you understand why. It’s no wonder that he and his dad move from town to town and state to state to keep people from knowing the truth about Caine. A monster lives inside of him – a genetic one. Then, one night and one wrong word and Caine’s father is in jail and Caine is moving – alone. The town is small, very small, and Caine knows that someone will remember why he and his dad left years ago. But as time passes, Caine lets his guard down and befriends Hannah – kind, beautiful, generous, and already taken.As I read about these two befriending each other, Caine getting homework help and Hannah exploring the world away from her preacher father’s eyes, I got a sense of foreboding that things were not going to go well - for Caine. I was right. He’s the bad boy, the one she’s supposed to stay away from and while I really wanted to like her, I couldn’t believe she had a boyfriend she wouldn’t dump for him. Really, I was mad at her for that. When Hannah finally came to her senses, circumstances got in the way pulling them apart. Caine woke up covered in blood with no memory of why.While we only get glimpses of the monster inside Caine, I was rooting for him all the way, especially when suspicious circumstances point to another monster being in the vicinity and possibly causing the havoc that has come upon the town. My favorite part of this book wasn’t about Hannah and Caine. My favorite part of this book was Caine himself. I felt his pain, his joy, his confusion, and his relief when he finally visits his mom and comes to term with what he is and what he’s done and reconciles with his dad. I felt like he had grown up and I had been on the journey with him.Overall, a good read but wished it was longer. I wanted to spend more time with the characters.